Final thoughts on Final project

Starting out trying to use the wiimote via OSCulator to MAX/MSP proved a daunting task for my steep, self-undisciplined-learning curve I created for myself.  I even explored the option of creating an AudioMulch set of contraptions linking a fun VST synth, the Reaktor5 from Native Instruments, and controlling some of the parameters via MIDI from OSCulator messages made by a waving and button-pressing wiimote controller.  I even downloaded PureData, an outdated DarwinRemote OSC control and then XQuartz which didn't fell any less complicated.
In the end, I decided to re-route the task to one that was presumably less riddled with technical obstacles.  I decided on the iphone-to-OSCulator app to AbeltonLive(a demo with 9 days till expiration) essentially back-mapping the MIDI messages for me.  I eventually found success and got it to map and control certain sliders and rotary knobs via TouchOSC while playing the keyboard.  Quite a chore, but also very rewarding once it worked.  I think I too will try the Leap Motion next...

Leap as a MIDI controller

http://www.askaudiomag.com/articles/using-leap-motion-as-a-midi-controller

This is a really cool idea. If I had abelton live or logic pro I would try using the leap motion and one of these apps as a controller for instruments in the DAW. For live performance, this could add a more physically exciting way to play keyboard or synth.

Leap Motion for Music

While looking into using the leap motion for my final project I came across this really interesting app someone designed for it. http://thenextweb.com/creativity/2014/04/04/leapmotions-new-muse-lets-create-music-hand-gestures/ It allows you to create music with hand and finger movements. If I had more time I think I would try developing a some type of synth controller with the device.

Comments on chap 6

Television has essentially formed its own culture and environment. Arguably, the same could be said today of the internet. Computers and the performing go along together in digital performance. However, one ca argue that theater, dance, and performance art has focused in demonstrating “liveness,” but within a media-saturated world. According to this week’s readings, on live performance, Auslander is trying to challenge the ideas of the traditional value of liveness. He proposed that “the dominant aesthetic force is the digital into which the live is assimilated may be persuasive, but the problem remains that there are clear differences between the digital and the live” (p.128). As digital media continuous evolving, taking into account Auslander’s argument is fundamental. In live performance what should be the priority is to represent a live event and watch it without focusing in artificial reproductions of the real. Something that it should be remember is the unique experience that viewers have during a live event.

Chapter 6 review

This chapter analyzes liveness as one of the key concepts of digital performance. It begins with opposed views of Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes. It seems to me that Benjamin’s theory is more persuasive than Barthes’s. In one respect, today no one will think that ‘every photograph is a certificate of presence’ because it is easy to distort contents of audiovisual products via technology. Also at another level, Barthes’s theory cannot hold water since photography is a major form of visual arts rather than a reference of reality. At this point, the author mentions about the position of authenticity in the performing arts. He points out that liveness actually depends on the factor of time. “Liveness in itself has nothing to do with the media form, but at core concerns temporality. Put simply, for the spectator, liveness is just ‘being there’, whatever performance form is being watched.” (p. 129). It can be said that temporal and presence are two prerequisites of liveness. Furthermore, apart from culture and cognition, technology may have a siginificant impact on the experience of digital performance through real-time transmission and interaction. 

Project Proposal

live instrument audio manipulation with visual animation

Using live an pre-recorded instrument looping along with prepared and live sample manipulation using an OSC linked wii

tools:

hardware- laptop, audio interface, guitar or moog or electricribe, wiimote

software- MAX/MSP, OSCulator, Audiomulch

visual- “found” archived video overlayed on scenes of earth, our solar system, galaxy, stars being formed, other galaxies, known universe; camera turns on audience?

video ref: 

flickr- the commons search: Florida film

Thoughts on Chapter 24

Life is like a drama and a video game is a place where we can apply our life principles and role-playing habits to it. Therefore, it is easy to understand author's standpoint in this chapter: the close correspondences between theater and video games.
Theoretically, this chapter offers us a series of explanations and examples to argue the theory of game performance but I thought the most instrumental significant is that opening a door for me to interpret and think everything from a performance perspective.  Every event combining with human's action could be viewed as a time-based activity, a book I read mentioned that a game that normally just made players spend several hours on addiction but left nothing, it inquired the meaning of making games.
However, I thought the glamour between life and game, reality and virtual reality or tangibleness and intangibleness is not how the boundary set for them but the relationship how to consider them as a whole. We perform ourselves in lives, we also perform ourselves in games. Just like our life, we couldn't say that sitting in a place without doing nothing is no meaning so we are never ought to do that. We need meaningless stuff to construct our meaningful life. In addition, human's thoughts always could give a thing a significance as long as he wants. Besides, as a performance, we also could appreciate and analyse a game from beginning to end, or from participants to spectators' perspective, through this process, which helps us to be more familiar with not only games or performances but also ourselves. All in all, the exploration of games and their significant aesthetic, cultural, psychological, and social implications is never going to stop, and the key to exploring everything is where we stand, from a human's angle.